MAME Movie Maker released

[Silver]

Oh, and "Bloody Roar 2" is an emulation problem.  Standard Mame chokes and just freezes on 1 frame - hence it wont work in BuddaMame.

[Buddabing]

Hi,

Great Progress with 0.92 build. Think I will put this one into gear and get my pc churning out videos, and building up the frame info. (Now that my pc is back up and running, after replacing every cap on the board......)

@Buddabing

It appears Vdub 1.6.4 has a slightly different Script format. For me it errors out with an unhelpful "" error AFTER making the video. The video is fine, but it needs manual intervention to continue. The culprit appears to be the:
"VirtualDub.video.SetDepth(24,24);" line in the cdb file. Removing this works fine - it appears this is no longer recognized in 1.6.4. It would be really helpful if you could remove it from the mame build.....

Also, when supplying the start and end frame inputs, does it still run the dectection routine? I would have expected to be slightly faster due to skipping the detection, but maybe it has no impact.

I don't want VDub 1.6.2 to have a problem if I take out the SetDepth line. If it doesn't I'll remove it.

I think the problem is that the program is still testing for black even if it being supplied the start and end frames. I should remove that, but as a workaround you can set -movieskipblack 0 for those movies.

EDIT: I forgot to ask if you had tried uncompressed pngs with Vdub 1.6.4.

[Silver]

I've tested Vdub 1.6.2 without the SetDepth line, and it worked fine - creating an identical avi file. I will explore more though, to see if there is any impact.

Vdub 1.6.4 works fine with the uncompressed pngs. (though I find compression level 1 much better)

-movieskipblack 0 works great - adds a 15-20% speed boost for me when you supply the start/end frames.

[Buddabing]

I've tested Vdub 1.6.2 without the SetDepth line, and it worked fine - creating an identical avi file. I will explore more though, to see if there is any impact.

Vdub 1.6.4 works fine with the uncompressed pngs. (though I find compression level 1 much better)

-movieskipblack 0 works great - adds a 15-20% speed boost for me when you supply the start/end frames.

Okay, I've removed the SetDepth line.

Also, I've made it so that if you are using -movieloops 2 it doesn't check for black frames.

Have you tried tweaking the Vdub settings to reduce the bitrate like Howard suggested?

Also, the new front end AtomicFE crashes on Xvid videos, but works okay (aspect ratio wrong, though) on Cinepak. Have you looked at that? Would that be something weird with the Xvid settings we are using?

I've uploaded a new executable.

[Silver]

Thanks....

Okay I've not really looked at changing the Xvid settings as I quite like the defaults, and people can now set up there own. However, I'll get some tighter settings you can use as defaults as email them over.

AtomicFE crashing: Hmmm could do with some more info here. I would be highly surprised its to do with Xvid settings, although its possible. With Xvid installed you have a fully compliant MPEG4 Directshow encoder/decoder available to the system. Does DivX also crash? Can the author of AtomicFE give us some feedback on this?

[Howard_Casto]

Looking at amotic fe... my guess is the improper aspect ratio is due to the fact that afe forces an aspect instead of letting the picture self correct.  I've noticed that in all the screenshots the images are forced to 3:4 which is a big no-no.  It may make the skin look better, but it causes distortion. 

My guess on the videos crashing is that it's using a plugin rather than a true directshow window.  ActiveX plugins often aren't fully direct show complaint. 

Again this is all a guess though. 

[sWampy]

I put in the latest listgen, and didn't notice it was set to generate all roms and clones overwriting my filter.  I don't really need the clone movies do I?  IE won't most fontends show you the parent movie if the clone movie doesn't exist. 

[Buddabing]

I put in the latest listgen, and didn't notice it was set to generate all roms and clones overwriting my filter.  I don't really need the clone movies do I?  IE won't most fontends show you the parent movie if the clone movie doesn't exist. 

Try setting -unique 1 in your listgen.ini. That way you'll still get a video for Pac-Man. You can also set use_clones 0 if you want.

Obviously, creating 5500 movies will take a lot more time and disk space than 2000.

[sWampy]

I put in the latest listgen, and didn't notice it was set to generate all roms and clones overwriting my filter.  I don't really need the clone movies do I?  IE won't most fontends show you the parent movie if the clone movie doesn't exist. 

Try setting -unique 1 in your listgen.ini. That way you'll still get a video for Pac-Man. You can also set use_clones 0 if you want.

Obviously, creating 5500 movies will take a lot more time and disk space than 2000.

Is there a reverse of that where I can easily make a batch file to delete the junk?

[Buddabing]

I put in the latest listgen, and didn't notice it was set to generate all roms and clones overwriting my filter.  I don't really need the clone movies do I?  IE won't most fontends show you the parent movie if the clone movie doesn't exist. 

Try setting -unique 1 in your listgen.ini. That way you'll still get a video for Pac-Man. You can also set use_clones 0 if you want.

Obviously, creating 5500 movies will take a lot more time and disk space than 2000.

Is there a reverse of that where I can easily make a batch file to delete the junk?

how about:
1) put select * from gamedata where isclone='1'; in your filter.sql, and set unique to 0 and use_clones=1 in your listgen.ini
2) run listgen
3) rename your batch.bat to something temporary
4) create a new batch.bat which has the line "del /Q movies\%1.avi" in it (or wherever you store your movies)
5) run makemovies.bat
6) change filter.sql back to what it was and rerun listgen.
7) change your batch.bat back to what it was.

Your mileage may vary, and I do not take responsibility for erased files.  I recommend testing your batch.bat with one file first.

[sWampy]

I put in the latest listgen, and didn't notice it was set to generate all roms and clones overwriting my filter.  I don't really need the clone movies do I?  IE won't most fontends show you the parent movie if the clone movie doesn't exist. 

Try setting -unique 1 in your listgen.ini. That way you'll still get a video for Pac-Man. You can also set use_clones 0 if you want.

Obviously, creating 5500 movies will take a lot more time and disk space than 2000.

Is there a reverse of that where I can easily make a batch file to delete the junk?

how about:
1) put select * from gamedata where isclone='1'; in your filter.sql, and set unique to 0 and use_clones=1 in your listgen.ini
2) run listgen
3) rename your batch.bat to something temporary
4) create a new batch.bat which has the line "del /Q movies\%1.avi" in it (or wherever you store your movies)
5) run makemovies.bat
6) change filter.sql back to what it was and rerun listgen.
7) change your batch.bat back to what it was.

Your mileage may vary, and I do not take responsibility for erased files.  I recommend testing your batch.bat with one file first.

I wasn't sure that wouldn't throw out a bunch I didn't want to throw out like pacman. ;-)

[donnyj]

Donny: I've created a -movieloops 3 option. It'll detect a loop but will continue capturing frames. The resulting movie, however, will not have the detected loop, it will be the entire span of frames. Do you want to have the original loop in the movie? Also, the -movieloops option is set by the batch.bat, so you will have to edit your makemovies.bat and set the -movieloops there.

Thank you VERY much, yes I would like the vdb to have the "detected loop"  this way I can "verify" that the detected is indeed the correct loop.  Hopefully I will only need to correct a small percent of VDBs.  Then, on the ones that are corrected, I could play with the settings and see if I can get that result "automagically".

[Buddabing]

I put in the latest listgen, and didn't notice it was set to generate all roms and clones overwriting my filter.  I don't really need the clone movies do I?  IE won't most fontends show you the parent movie if the clone movie doesn't exist. 

Try setting -unique 1 in your listgen.ini. That way you'll still get a video for Pac-Man. You can also set use_clones 0 if you want.

Obviously, creating 5500 movies will take a lot more time and disk space than 2000.

Is there a reverse of that where I can easily make a batch file to delete the junk?

how about:
1) put select * from gamedata where isclone='1'; in your filter.sql, and set unique to 0 and use_clones=1 in your listgen.ini
2) run listgen
3) rename your batch.bat to something temporary
4) create a new batch.bat which has the line "del /Q movies\%1.avi" in it (or wherever you store your movies)
5) run makemovies.bat
6) change filter.sql back to what it was and rerun listgen.
7) change your batch.bat back to what it was.

Your mileage may vary, and I do not take responsibility for erased files.  I recommend testing your batch.bat with one file first.

I wasn't sure that wouldn't throw out a bunch I didn't want to throw out like pacman. ;-)

Hey, easy come, easy go! Truly, it shouldn't deleted that many you want to keep. Just eyeball the makemovies.bat before you run it.

Alternatively, make the batch.bat not delete, but move them to another folder, deadmov for example:
move movies\%1.bat deadmov

[Buddabing]

Okay,

I've uploaded a new binary which contains donny's requested change, which is to create a movie with the original loop even if snapshots are created all the way to -maxmovielength when -movieloops 3 is selected.

When testing I also hand-tweaked a few loops for Silver:
zookeep,2774,5491
startrek,2,3923
mario,26,2816
gorf,9,2730
frogger,93,5240

[donnyj]

Okay,

I've uploaded a new binary which contains donny's requested change, which is to create a movie with the original loop even if snapshots are created all the way to -maxmovielength when -movieloops 3 is selected.

Thank you very much!!!

[Lilwolf]

And one thing that I don't believe is mentioned enought..

Buddabing...

You have the best animated signature image I've seen in AGES!  It cracks me up every time I look at it. 

[Silver]

Ok Apologies this took me much longer than planned!! (Had to give myself a crash course in PHP and MySQL)

I've got a simple webpage up where you can download an up-to-date list on the start/end frames for roms. Its generated on the fly from a SQL database so its nice and easy for me to update. 

http://www.silverfoxy.plus.com/AttractVideos.htm

The DB has NO clones - it should be just parent romnames (around 3000). I generated this from Buddabings Listgen so shout if I set it up wrong..

It's currently based on the Mame 0.92 romset. At the moment, its configured to only create a text file with roms that have start/end frame data (so no "abc,0,0"). There are only about 8 roms listed at the moment as that's all that has been posted here and I've not started ploughing through them.

It names the file "ssf.txt" by default as that's what Listgen currently looks for.

If anyone is creating videos, please save your vdb files (by removing the "del %1.vdb" from the batch.bat). You can just zip them and email them to me and I'll do the rest.

[donnyj]

after downloading 4 different ways, I think the mame092.zip on your site is corrupt

[Buddabing]

after downloading 4 different ways, I think the mame092.zip on your site is corrupt 

So it would seem. I'll fix it in the morning.


Sometimes I forget to set binary mode when uploading..   

Lilwolf you should check out starwarskid.com

[2600]

Ok Apologies this took me much longer than planned!! (Had to give myself a crash course in PHP and MySQL)

I've got a simple webpage up where you can download an up-to-date list on the start/end frames for roms. Its generated on the fly from a SQL database so its nice and easy for me to update. 

http://www.silverfoxy.plus.com/AttractVideos.htm

The DB has NO clones - it should be just parent romnames (around 3000). I generated this from Buddabings Listgen so shout if I set it up wrong..

It's currently based on the Mame 0.92 romset. At the moment, its configured to only create a text file with roms that have start/end frame data (so no "abc,0,0"). There are only about 8 roms listed at the moment as that's all that has been posted here and I've not started ploughing through them.

It names the file "ssf.txt" by default as that's what Listgen currently looks for.

If anyone is creating videos, please save your vdb files (by removing the "del %1.vdb" from the batch.bat). You can just zip them and email them to me and I'll do the rest.

Thanks Silver, I just sent you tmnt and xmen(which is really long).  I'll send you vdb files from now on if it is easier.

Offhand does anyone know of any other games which are troublesome, use multiple loops, etc.  As I'll try to get some of those out of the way.

[Silver]

Not sure offhand, although it may be worth making mame set a flag or a comment to the console or output vdb stating that no loop was found, and its just hit the max 10000 frame point. This is ok if you don't want too long videos, but the catch is you have all the bios rubbish....

Alternitively if you send me vdb files, and can check if any are ending on 10000 frames. (Although for you, 2600, it looks like you've upped this limit anyway....

[Buddabing]

Okay I fixed the latest binary.



Silver: My impression was that the ssf.txt file would contain only the files that were hand-created by actually going out and looking for the start and end frames by hand. I don't think it does any good to extract the information from the vdbs, since someone can get a more accurate loop by hand and future optimizations can possibly improve the loop detection.

The binary I just fixed prints out a message when -maxmovielength is reached.

[2600]

I tend to agree with Buddabing on this.  It's one thing to have a list of start,stop frames.  It's another to have a list of correct start,stop frames.

For the list, I can currently run and see which one's exceed the 10000 frame count so that's not a problem.  But currently I am trying to do the games where there is multiple loops as these are the ones a moviemaker user will have a problem with because it will tend to get Loop A, but not Loop B, C, etc with out tweaking your ini file a bit.  These are also a bit more troublesome as they won't exceed the 10000 frame count because a loop will be detected.

Howard, do you know of any more off the top of your head?

[Silver]

Okay agreed - the database will be restricted hand-tweaked accurate frame listings.

If there is call in the future for a 2nd db with just the detected frame listings, Its easy to make - it just makes the whole process faster for anyone else.

@2600

I think a lot of the fighters, particualry neogeo ones. look at the kof series, last blade 1+2, garou... and maybe some newer capcom fighters?

[Howard_Casto]

If you guys are talking the technically correct loop (all bios obtained by multiple loops)  then ALL fighters do this as well as all beat-em ups.

I think it's a tad silly to do them though... it makes for an abnormally long video that nobody would watch all the way through. 

I made vids for tmnt and xmen back in the day because they were my favs.... after living with the full attracts for a few years I've found that I've never sat through the whole thing for these games... not even when I'm exploring a room in 3darcade. 

I think it's important to get a nice loop in case someone does watch a movie to the end  but usually after about 30 seconds, people loose interest anyway. 

Also it may prove to be impossible.  Take the mortal kombat games for example, the bios they show after the attract mode is random.  So is the gameplay sample.  Most of the newer fighters are like this too. 

Beat-em ups and sidescrollers are notorious for this too in that they randomly show the gameplay samples of various levels.  Of course, most are coded not to show the same one twice in a row. 


As for non-standard loops.... there aren't that many. 

I think the capcom beat-em-ups do.  Like knights of the round ect.... (sorry the names escape me atm) 

If you just want one full loop with the title and a gameplay sample, then suprisingly most fighters pass fine with budda's latest improvments.  I haven't really ran across any problems yet, save c&d (which isn't a fighter, it's a beat-em-up). 

[)p(]

The xvid output of moviemaker can also crash 3darcade i was told. The demo file the guy send me turned out to not providing the fe with the correct height and width info. ie both reported as 0. The main, maybe related, issue is that it causes an error in the video dll when it tries to grab a frame. Not much I can do about preventing this. 

peter

[2600]

It did appear to me that the kof series was random.  Which if no one minds I'll skip because if I have to watch the kof attract modes one more time, ugh.  I'll skip other fighters as well unless someone thinks a particular one doesn't fit the mold. ( I should probably do kof96 since that has the potential of not being as cleanly detected)

That being said the MK series at least 2 and 3 didn't appear random to me and along with XMEN and TMNT the start,stop frames are saved.  Using Xvid, XMEN makes an 87MB movie and the rest are about 20MB not too bad and the user has the ability to make them smaller.

I'm trying Zaxxon currently as that one doesn't appear right, then I'll take a look at C&D(dino.zip).  After that unless I notice something or someone else mentions something.

[Buddabing]

The xvid output of moviemaker can also crash 3darcade i was told. The demo file the guy send me turned out to not providing the fe with the correct height and width info. ie both reported as 0. The main, maybe related, issue is that it causes an error in the video dll when it tries to grab a frame. Not much I can do about preventing this.

[Silver]

The xvid output of moviemaker can also crash 3darcade i was told. The demo file the guy send me turned out to not providing the fe with the correct height and width info. ie both reported as 0. The main, maybe related, issue is that it causes an error in the video dll when it tries to grab a frame. Not much I can do about preventing this. 

peter

Could you test an Xvid file not made with Vdub/MMM? It would be helpful to know if this is a problem just with the codec. (unlikely but possible)

The fact that all players I've tried report the resolution correctly makes me slightly suspicious. Are you using a Directshow decoder?

[Silver]

I would like Silver to contact the author of Virtual Dub regarding this issue. I wonder if it is fixed in 1.6.4.

I will do after a bit of testing here first. Its possible that if Vdub was at fault all videos made by it would fail if it failed to but the resoution info in the header. If only xvid videos fail it could be the codec or a setting or the decoding side.

[Silver]

I've sent some new xvid settings to Buddabing that should roughly half the size of the videos. Xmen went from 90meg to about 48meg. Obviously some quality is lost, should look fine in small preview window though.

I'll try and look into the problems xvid is creating - I may make a few test avis and post them here for people to test to try and rule out some issues.

[vibez]

I'm thinking of using this tool to make my own video's.

Is it worth me using this tool yet, or hanging fire until the development progresses some more? I'm under the impression this process can take upto a week. is that correct?

I don't want to sacrifice my machine for that long if the tool isn't 99% yet.

Oh, & thanks to the guys who made this possible. It looks amazing

[Zero_Hour]

I've been using MMM for the last few weeks, and I think that the results are already great for what I need. Yes, it will take you a while to generate a full set of vids, but I just set up batches to run at night or when I'm at work.

I've had minimal issues - and they were mostly related to user error.

I'd say go for it.

And thanks again Buddabing for an excellent tool.

[Silver]

I'm thinking of using this tool to make my own video's.

Is it worth me using this tool yet, or hanging fire until the development progresses some more? I'm under the impression this process can take upto a week. is that correct?

I don't want to sacrifice my machine for that long if the tool isn't 99% yet.

Oh, & thanks to the guys who made this possible. It looks amazing

I'd say its pretty good right now. Recent work has made the loop detection highly successful.

There is a current issue that the xvid videos seem to crash in some FE's - I'm looking into this now. It works in Mamewah for me, thats the only FE I've tried.

Do a test run of like 20 games you often play, and see if you are happy with the videos. You can set your own compression details, or use the defaults. If you use the defaults - they should be about to change to make the videos smaller so you could hang on for a day or so. Be aware a full set is quite large!

Even when there are 'errors' - ie the full attract mode is not detected - you often end up with a perfectly good attract video that is just not as long as the actual attract (look at dino.zip for an example).

Oh, and definately only create videos for parent roms (set unique 1 and useclones 0 in listgen.ini). This will save loads of space and time.

Anything I've missed anyone?

[Lilwolf]

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,59757,00.html

[Buddabing]

I've sent some new xvid settings to Buddabing that should roughly half the size of the videos. Xmen went from 90meg to about 48meg. Obviously some quality is lost, should look fine in small preview window though.

I'll try and look into the problems xvid is creating - I may make a few test avis and post them here for people to test to try and rule out some issues.

I got your new xvid settings. 64street's video went down by about a third. I don't see any difference in the video, so I'll definitely put in the changes. I'll keep the old ones around, ifdefed out, for a while. Unfortunately, it looks like elpresidente has changed things around on the mameprojects.com site and I can't upload temporarily.

Vibez: You can always interrupt the movie making process with control-c and rerun it later. The batch process doesn't remake movies that are already made. I ran it 24/7 for a week and interrupted it whenever I needed to.

There is one thing people should do before creating their videos. It was mentioned in this thread before, and I should put it on the first post. They should run each game once in order to create the nvram settings. Some games (Robotron, Qix, Zookeeper, for example) don't behave right the first time the game is run until it is either reset or run again.

I'm going to end up deleting all my videos once everything is finalized. My computer doesn't do anything except fold proteins when it is idle anyway, and electricity is cheap where I live.

[Howard_Casto]

The xvid output of moviemaker can also crash 3darcade i was told. The demo file the guy send me turned out to not providing the fe with the correct height and width info. ie both reported as 0. The main, maybe related, issue is that it causes an error in the video dll when it tries to grab a frame. Not much I can do about preventing this.

[Popcorrin]

Maybe one of you guys could clear up a question I have on resolution.
Specifically I am curious on how mmm utilizes the resolution option on the command line.  I recently made a video of tekken and the resolution specified by the listgen is 640x480.  This is of course what I used in the batch but I noticed though that the pngs all had a resolution of 512x240 and that the resulting movie was twice as wide as it is tall.  While mmm is running mame in order to create the movie the aspect ratio looks correct.  I also tried the moviesquare option but the resulting movies looked the same as before.  I have my mame.ini set as follows.  Just curious what I need to do to get movies with the correct aspect ratio.

### MAME.ini ###

### Frontend Related ###
clones                  1

### Windows path and directory options ###
rompath                 roms
samplepath              samples
# inipath               <NULL> (not set)
cfg_directory           cfg
nvram_directory         nvram
memcard_directory       memcard
input_directory         inp
hiscore_directory       hi
state_directory         sta
artwork_directory       artwork
snapshot_directory      snap
moviesnap_directory     moviesnp
diff_directory          diff
ctrlr_directory         ctrlr
cheat_file              cheat.dat
history_file            history.dat
mameinfo_file           mameinfo.dat

### Windows video options ###
autoframeskip           0
frameskip               0
waitvsync               1
triplebuffer            0
window                  1
ddraw                   1
direct3d                0
hwstretch               1
# screen                <NULL> (not set)
cleanstretch            auto
resolution              auto
refresh                 0
scanlines               0
switchres               0
switchbpp               1
maximize                1
keepaspect              1
matchrefresh            1
syncrefresh             0
throttle                1
full_screen_brightness   0.000000
frames_to_run           0
effect                  none
screen_aspect           4:3

### Windows Direct3D 2D video options ###
zoom                    2
d3dtexmanage            1
d3dfilter               1
d3dfeedback             0
d3dscan                 100
d3deffectrotate         1
d3dprescale             auto
d3deffect               none
# d3dcustom             <NULL> (not set)
# d3dexpert             <NULL> (not set)

### Windows misc options ###
sleep                   1
rdtsc                   0
high_priority           0

### Windows sound options ###
audio_latency           1
# wavwrite              <NULL> (not set)

### Input device options ###
mouse                   0
joystick                0
lightgun                0
dual_lightgun           0
offscreen_reload        0
steadykey               0
keyboard_leds           1
led_mode                ps/2
a2d_deadzone            0.300000
# ctrlr                 <NULL> (not set)
paddle_device           keyboard
adstick_device          keyboard
pedal_device            keyboard
dial_device             keyboard
trackball_device        keyboard
lightgun_device         keyboard
digital                 none

### Mame CORE video options ###
norotate                0
ror                     0
rol                     0
autoror                 0
autorol                 0
flipx                   0
flipy                   0
debug_resolution        auto
gamma                   1.000000
brightness              1.000000
pause_brightness        0.650000

### Mame CORE vector game options ###
antialias               1
translucency            1
beam                    1.000000
flicker                 0.000000
intensity               1.500000

### Mame CORE sound options ###
samplerate              44100
samples                 1
resamplefilter          1
sound                   1
volume                  0

### Mame CORE misc options ###
artwork                 0
use_backdrops           1
use_overlays            1
use_bezels              1
artwork_crop            0
artwork_resolution      2
cheat                   0
debug                   0
# playback              <NULL> (not set)
# record                <NULL> (not set)
log                     0
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While on the subject of resolution I have always been confused with the fact that some games have resolutions that are nowhere near a 4/3 aspect ratio but they are almost always displayed on a standard screen with a 4/3 aspect ratio.  Exactly how does that work?

[donnyj]

possible bug, please check....

I cannot get reset to work with "kiwame", when just using mmm without movie mode, it works.... but I cannot get it to reset in movie mode.... ??

reset is required to get the game to run....

[Buddabing]

possible bug, please check....

I cannot get reset to work with "kiwame", when just using mmm without movie mode, it works.... but I cannot get it to reset in movie mode.... ??

reset is required to get the game to run....

That's not a bug, that's a feature.

All user interface input (tab, pause, etc) except ESC is disabled in movie mode.

I did it so accidental keypresses would not mess up the movie.

I guess I can rethink that strategy. I did not foresee this problem, I've never played "kiwame", or even heard of it. No wonder, it's mahjong, and it's not even pr0n!!

I'll think about your suggestion.